Plan the play continued.

Analysis of this hand is to be found in yesterday’s comments and it can be seen there is a complicated combination of possibilities to be catered for.

The hand comes from The Encyclopedia of Card Play Techniques in Bridge. This could be a bible. But in fact it misses for lack of a good editor who would tighten up the material.

Take this hand, for example. It is given as ‘discovery before committing to a line of play’.

The simplistic view, ignoring squeeze possiblities, is that if clubs don’t behave one needs hearts either two extra hearts or two extra diamonds. So, Reve’s argument is that one should play two rounds of hearts early, ending with the queen and then clubs. In this way declarer will know which red suit to discard if the clubs don’t break.

But in fact, declarer only ever needs five heart tricks, so a heart can always be thrown as the clubs are played.

In practise, this is not how one would analyse the hand at the table, as an early discovery play.

I’m going to give some more examples from this book, but for me, it is spoiled by such flaws. There is no reason why a perfect example of what he is trying to get across here couldn’t have been used. Whether this is because the author isn’t a good enough player, or whether the whole thing fell down at editorial level, I don’t know.

I would be interested, however, to know if other people have the same feeling about examples like this or whether you all think I’m being too fussy.

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I think you’re being too fussy and the author is essentially right. The main point of the hand is that it is a discovery play – you need to cash the hearts ending in hand before you make three discards from dummy. Otherwise, you won’t know whether to pitch a second heart on the clubs and spade, or a diamond. The additional squeeze possibilites don’t detract from the main message.

Ben’s revised line is a slight improvement on mine (and Reve’s) because you get a slight extra chance if hearts are 5-0 onside, the diamond finesse works, and the opponents win the first or second club – a very small additional chance. Reve should have replaced the H10 in dummy with a small one for his analysis to be totally right.